


Seen it Coming

by dev_chieftain



Series: Time enough for everything [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Psychological Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 21:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dev_chieftain/pseuds/dev_chieftain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on the ROTG Kinkmeme.</p><p>Pitch returns less human than ever, seeking vengeance on the person he sees as the crux of his defeat: Jack Frost. Using a stolen bauble from Father Time, he steals Jack away, trapping him in a time whorl for three days before the other Guardians realize and free him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jack - Should

In the years that follow, Jack's most constant companion is the thought that he should have known.

He should have seen it coming; should have dodged under the bleachers and not into the floodlights, should have been smart enough to know that shadows cast under direct light are the blackest, darkest things. Should have called for help the moment he'd seen that his nighttime planning for the next big snow day was going to be interrupted by an unwanted visitor. Should have guessed that if Pitch was back, was recognizably Pitch, it wasn't good news, wasn't a sign that Pitch was weaker. Should have understood that he could not take Pitch on all by himself because, if he was honest with himself, Jack was scared all the time, and that was part of what made him still so very human.

With all the time in the world, Jack is able to crystallize the moment before this moment for himself, to completely immortalize it in his mind.

_I'm going to tell you something, Jack. This is a trinket I collected from Father Time._

Pitch had smiled, six crinkles appearing by either eye, his teeth sharp, his breath the rancid stench of decaying corpses. Jack, skewered on shadows made solid, had hung like a rag doll, fighting to make his fingers move. It hadn't hurt, exactly, but there was a numbness in his hands below the wrists, throbbing and warm. His hands still do not move correctly now.

_Do you know what it does?_

The shadows had carried him along, gently rocking, like some kind of palantine at Pitch's side. He could have fought, still, but the pervasive fear had overpowered him, had paralyzed his shouts for help before they were ever formed. Rather than explain himself, Pitch had been content to leave Jack wondering at the answer to that last question as they circled down and down and down. Eventually, Jack was brought into the depths of an abandoned system of tunnels beneath Vienna, his shallow, rapid breathing making his throat sharp and painful with ice crystals, frost gathering on his tongue. Here were the kinds of shadows Pitch truly thrived in, old things that had not been weakened by the sun for longer than Jack had existed. They surged up like the tide and engulfed Jack's body, pulling him down, down until he was pinned against the cement, bound head to toe by the invisible touch of the shadows. 

Slowly, deliberately, Pitch had set the tiny hourglass down beside Jack's head and flipped it, and suddenly the world had ceased to exist as he knew it.

Each millisecond was a day.

Light could not penetrate the time between time; in this between existence, there was only the constant motion of particles, electrons, quarks, the vague outlines of what must be. Very faintly, now, he remembers the initial shock, searching for miles, climbing up and up ladders that he could not properly see until he had had nowhere else to go. Remembers, too, that it took many hours before his eyes had properly adjusted to the extremely faint light that permeated the world. Even then, he could barely see, and stumbled blindly through ruined wastelands that seemed to constantly change their shape, as if the pieces that constructed them were shifting from place to place in a pinwheeling motion. He learned quickly not to stare too hard, too long at anything-- not even buildings, not even stones-- because when he did, he started to see it slowly crawling about, lapping at his feet like the hungry waters of an icy lake. 

Jack could move normally through it all, could hear himself, could breathe (somehow), but nothing-- not buildings, not pathways, not people, not plants-- held a shape quite as it should. Nothing really held a shape at all.

Eyes followed him where no one stood, and everything had a slight bluish color when he approached, a reddish color when he left. He spent the first several days in an exhausting spiral of rage, determination, fear and depression, swinging back and forth as he warred with himself and his hope that Someone Would Come, that someone would fix it all. Nothing had seemed to move, at first, everything stone-statue still, frozen in horrific poses. Living creatures were the worst, though he couldn't help looking, morbidly fascinated by them. People's intestines pulsed rapidly as he watched them, their bellies twitching, the staticky outline of their doll-like faces buzzing between one expression and the next at all times, never wholly one or another. The uncanny valley of not-quite reality was maddening enough on its own, but soon enough Jack began to become aware of the things that moved as fast as he did, here in this place outside of time itself.

They were like spirits, or demons or nightmares or perhaps they were simply all the things that had come and gone before on the world's surface. They seemed to take every shape and size simultaneously, and their eyes were red and glaring, awful, terrifying things. He ran from them when he could, frightened almost to death that they would see him, touch him, hear him, eat him, destroy him. These, he was sure, had not been a part of the world he came from. He toyed with the possibility that he had been shunted into some other universe, but more often he feared that he had been pushed down from a fantasy into reality. When he caught himself thinking such things, he tried to chase them away, reminding himself that he'd been alive for hundreds of years, and no matter how strange this place was, he had only been here a little while. 

"Just a little while," Jack told himself, trying not to notice the way his own voice reverberated back on itself, collapsing like a quantum singularity and lingering in the air impossibly long after he'd said the words, transformed into a lingering, haunting whine that slowly descended from the pitch of his voice as time continued to pass. "I'm only gonna be here a little while. This is probably just a crazy nightmare, anyway."

Where ever he went, even when he was (paradoxically) trying to be alone, he eventually found that the horror-things that shambled around with their glaring eyes appeared nearby, often heading straight for him. They especially appeared near the patches of perpetual sound where he had spoken, and so he quickly gave that habit up, heart pounding so hard he thought it would burst as he ran from them, repulsed and terrified of their nearness. 

He ran and he ran, and ran, and ran, but everywhere, the spirits walked, terrible things with teeth in their fingers and proboscis mouths. The paltry half-memory of light that dusted this other-world and let him see also let him see himself, examine himself, confirm that he was still himself as he had always known his form: that of all the things here, he still looked like Jack Frost. He, and only he. There were not plants or animals or cars or planes or people here, so it was just as well that immortals did not need to sleep, or eat.

Only the walker-spirits seemed to live here; the walkers, and now Jack.

So in that first few weeks, he memorized the moment before he'd been brought here and agonized over how to return. He tried to find the hourglass, or Pitch, or even shadows, as he knew them. He went deep down into the sewers (he thought they were probably sewers), and searched until he couldn't even remember which direction he'd come from, couldn't even see. When he surfaced, the light seemed almost blindingly bright, and Jack had to remind himself, silently, that this was nothing compared to the light of the sun, or the moon. He reminded himself, daily, of an ever-growing laundry list of things he'd really, really liked about the world before. He thought of the Guardians, and children, and of skyscrapers and a good, belly-aching sort of laugh, and told himself firmly that this hollow half-existence was not how things were supposed to be. That the world before was what was real. That the children and the Guardians and his friends were real. That there was a sky, and in it, a moon. That there was a place to come back to, if he could just figure out what it was Pitch had done.

He went over his litany of the life he'd known for over three hundred years, now, and the world he'd explored and loved and had fun in and fought battles for, until it felt stale. Until the weeks began to blur into months, and though he was never hungry, never tired, never wanting for anything, he was also never seen. Soon enough, he conquered his fear of the unknown things and their terrible, all-seeing eyes because they were the only thing that he could see in the first place.

In desperation, he tried to catch their attention, to merit their notice. He screamed and flung snow at them and called to them and begged and pleaded with them, to no avail. The frozen forms stood solitary watch, unfazed. The moving, ethereal things that haunted him wafted past, ignoring him as surely as the humans had, all those years.

After a year, Jack began to truly panic; after fifty, he was at his wit's end, depressed and terrified and always on a knife's edge of confusion and absolute terror about the world around him. By the time five hundred years had passed, his mind had mostly shut down, rejecting the world that had rejected him. He sat in a corner of some partially seen structure, clutching his staff to himself, and cried until he was too tired to cry, until his body was exhausted and he felt as though he never intended to move again.

He went through cycles. He lost track of time. He could not have said how many thousands of years later it was that the world suddenly blurred, coming into weird focus. He had grown used to the world: had gotten up and walked its entire surface, once or twice; had seen the un-things and the half-beings and the upside-down inside-out ugliness of it; had, in a mad daze, gone about trying to stir up fun as he had, once, for human children. But he could see that the new world was different from himself, that he wasn't really a part of it, and the ever fading, ever fainter dream he half-remembered only broke him whenever it surfaced in his memory again, disturbing his apathetic acceptance with the pathetic wish that there was something more. Eventually, the only thing that remained was the knowledge that this was all his fault, somehow. Jack didn't remember whether he'd ever done anything to make the world this way, or not. He knew he'd let his guard down, once upon a time. Never, Jack told himself, as he hid from the light of the surface in the cool, cool darkness of the tunnels there once more. Never again. 

He went through cycles. Every time he hit depression again, it hit harder.

Eons had passed by the time the world came back. 

It _hurt_. It felt like Jack's entire body had been slammed into a wall, but there was no impact. Just, suddenly his chest arched, and he felt a tingling, faint pain all across his skin. Jack lay listless in the arms of a thing with green and purple and wings, but no eyes. (No, eyes, but not the same as the walkers, the things beyond his touch and ken that didn't see him.) Sounds buzzed above and around him, one sound many times, in a rising panicked sound he didn't understand. It was a shock. It felt bright, and that aside, the sound vanished almost as soon as it was made, which frightened him, a little.

He lay listless in the dreamy film of it, and did not understand, and did not react, and did not move. It seemed that something else moved him, but he didn't care. That had happened before. Maybe there was something strange and gritty on his face, but he didn't think much of it. It didn't matter. 

For a time, Jack lay in a soft cocoon in a finely decorated place with things in it. (But he got distracted, even sometimes daydreamed; of the world he had come from, of the black and bleak between-places with his now familiar walkers, his shifting statues and his solitude). Time seemed strange, anyway, though it could not have been long before the blue and green and purple thing returned and buzzed at him. Also, a red thing, with white and gray and blue eyes. (Blue eyes. Yes. He knew about them, somehow.)

Those colorful things buzzed and warbled, and there was something kind of familiar about it, something almost nice, when he was able to quell the little nagging pulse of fear that hammered in his chest. It felt a little like they were coming to him personally, these strange things, almost...visiting him. He started to laugh, one morning, at his own sheer audacity. It wasn't possible; he hadn't been visible for eons. He couldn't even remember why he was here. What a joke.

When his emotions got the better of him, and his hysteric laughter ebbed into a chest-aching sob, the colorful flying thing tried to touch his face. _Warm._ It was a shock, the warmth of the creature's extremity passing so near to his face, and for the first panicked second he was sure that if it touched him, he would melt. He was certain beyond knowing that if that thing should ever touch him, it would hurt even worse than being shoved into this weird, colorful world. He felt his heart aching for safety, and more than a little, he wished he were back in the right world, where and _when_ it was dark. 

Fear bloomed through his entire being at this unknown experience and Jack screamed, scrambling away; he clutched at his face, willing it to stay whole, unmelted, unshattered, and huddled in the safety of the shadows until the flying thing finally went away. 

Now he sits, undisturbed and unaware, in that same place as night falls. It's hard to see in this weird, bright light, and not as cold as he's used to. He has no idea, realizes, where he is. If he tried to look outside to find out, he would surely be blinded by the intensity of the light. He sits, thoughts drifting when the panic eases up enough to let them, sifting down like flakes of ice. His only, and constant, companion is the thought that he should have known, he should have seen it coming-- whatever it was. The details have escaped him. Whatever: he must be on his guard from here on out.

So he clutches his staff until it creaks with frost, and waits.


	2. Sandman - Have

For the second time in as many years (it really doesn't take long for Pitch to muster his strength in the modern day, does it?), the Guardians find themselves facing down the master of fear, a half-formless avatar of rage. There are differences, to be sure. Last time, there was evidence of lengthy planning, caution, Reason. Pitch had been very clever, and while Sandman did not like him, there had still been something of a human in there. It had left some of them wondering. They had talked about who Pitch might have been, 'Before'.

The Nightmares so noticeably changed him, Sandman thinks, but the others hadn't seemed to acknowledge it when he appeared. Sandman can't imagine why not. He could immediately sense that something was off. While not entirely mindless, Pitch had lashed out in wild and reckless spasms uncharacteristic of his history with the Guardians, erratic, almost like he was still wounded (and maybe he was). He had stirred up trouble all over the planet, leading them on a merry, fast-paced chase. A bomb scare: it had quickly faded into laughter as children mocked their adult counterparts for worrying. A brief mass panic deadly swarms of genetically altered bees: it had melted over into surprised happiness at the discovery that the creatures were of a gentle nature, and yielded some of the sweetest honeys. Where before, Pitch had taken caution to stir the cauldron of the human consciousness around central fears they could not escape, he seemed content lately to rile them up only with self-defeating nonsense that was profoundly underwhelming. He drank his fill, terrorized a few children, and as soon as he'd appeared, he vanished again.

On the third day after the latest attack, Sandman was able to put his finger on what had been bothering him about the nature of Pitch's attacks. It seemed obvious to Sandman that Jack Frost was missing. When he tried to mention the young Guardian, however, Bunnymund spent a good hour arguing with North about Frost's lack of responsibility, complaining that he'd missed two relatively large crises in two days and completely missing the point. Toothiana, unconcerned, had shrugged it off. She reminded Sandman that Jack was reclusive even on the best of days, still shy and new to his role as a Guardian. She expected he would show up if he was truly needed, but since the threats thus far had been less than threatening, it wasn't particularly bad that he had yet to appear. He gave up trying to explain to them after that, frustrated (not for the first time) by their lack of understanding.

What struck Sandman as most suspicious, and best evidence that there might be something dangerous afoot, was Pitch's elusive attitude. True, Pitch had always been a little cowardly, but he delighted in his monologues, his diatribes. And if anything, he ought to have been calling Jack Frost out in anger, as it was Jack Frost whose help had beaten him back the year before. 

Instead, Pitch had said very little to his rivals, and faded off into the shadows as soon as his opponents arrived, his fear-mongering shattering into relief and joy and happiness while he yet lingered, wincing in the shadows as he made his retreat. So the third night, Sandman lassoed his compatriots with a rope of sand, stomped his foot, and (though it was supremely complicated) explained that something was suspicious about all this, and that they must follow Pitch and find out what he was up to if they wanted to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

North bowed out, as it was nearly December, but Bunnymund came along, and Toothiana was quick to agree, once she understood his concern.

Finding Pitch had never been difficult. One simply had to find someone terrified, and Pitch's laughter would lead all the way back to his latest lair. They split up, Toothiana flitting over Europe, Bunnymund exploring Asia, and Sandman the whole of South America. He was deep in Santiago in Chile when the soft hum of a fairy's wings interrupted him (weaving dreams as he searched, as his work was never really done), her tiny hummingbird chirp breaking the silence that had lingered around him.

Intrigued, he followed, flying easily across the sea at the fairy's feet, guiding a sled of prancing dogs whose long coats flamed in the wind, lustrous gold. Down into the streets of Vienna they flew, into the channels, down under them into secret-seeming corridors of shadowed water beneath the city. From there, it became immediately obvious what Toothiana had found: the water here was lightly frosted, the occasional gusts of air laden with ice.

Sandman rushed up the tunnel, the fairy by his side, and burst out into the midst of an enormous icy web. Here struggled Toothiana at the task of prizing Jack Frost's limp and motionless body from the ice that now surrounded him. His form flickered and shuddered like a broadcast signal, and his eyes stared glassily out at the world unseeing, red-rimmed with silent tears. When Toothiana tried to touch him, her hand slipped through, meeting the ice beneath him. She recoiled with a yelp of dismay.

A soft chuckle started up in the darkness around them as Sandman approached, and echoed up the icy halls until it sprang out of the ice full-formed beside Jack's body, one shadowed hand touching his face almost kindly, like a parent comforting a sleeping child through a nightmare. No response; Jack barely seemed to be breathing, but where Toothiana's hands had slipped through, Jack's form seemed to hold stable for his captor.

Pitch smiled through the shadows at the pair of them, chasing Toothiana back with a lash of shadows, flinging a few spikes of his darkness at Sandman in a half-hearted attempt to corrupt him. His posture was casual, almost reckless, and they stood strong, waiting.

He'd long since learned there was no point in trying to speak to Pitch; whether Fear deigned to notice what was being said to him or not depended solely on his mood, and he seemed to prefer talking over what was said to listening, anyway. Toothiana, seething, fluffed out to nearly twice her size, demanding tightly "Let him go." in a tone that suggested she would kill if the answer was no.

Pitch laughed again, sweeping aside his sable cloak to let them look again on Jack's unchanging, hopeless expression. "I suppose I might as well, hmm? He hasn't really been afraid all day." The cloak began to scatter into crawling worms, fluttering mosquitos, and rats, as Pitch broke apart into a million vermin and vanished again into the shadows with a crooning chuckle. "Hasn't been much of anything, really!"

For his own reasons, Sandman could not scream, but he was grateful when Toothiana did; they went at once to their young friend's side, and tried to make sense of what they saw. It seemed so familiar to Sandman, but he could not place it. There was a strange sort of light sparkling over Jack's body and beyond it, seeming to mark him everywhere in the tunnel and nowhere all at the same time. Power was pooling here, they could both easily feel it, but it didn't seem to be in evidence at all. Nothing bound Jack to the stone, no strange artifacts had been fused with his form. Until Bunnymund arrived, they both simply hovered over Jack's body, trying to figure out how to remove him from the frosty web he'd woven (perhaps unwittingly) for himself, or even to touch him at all.

"Did you find him? The fairy led me down here, so I--" Toothiana looked up in frustration just as Bunnymund skidded to a stop on the ice path to where Jack lay, gasping. "An hourglass--!" Bunnymund's eyesight, ever impeccable, led him straight to their sides, pointing at what seemed to be nothing, urgently. "That's Father Time's work!"

Sandman gawped, half-embarrassed that he hadn't realized the connections right away. The ice crawl was unusually strong for just three days of Jack laying in one place, assuming it had even been that long-- but if Jack's body had effectively been trapped here in a time-sink, that explained the power source, and their inability to move Jack (or touch him at all).

Bunnymund, much like Toothiana, began to bristle, the fur at the back of his neck and his chest bushing out in an angry, cotton-soft display. "What's he got against Frost? What the hell's going on?!"

Trying to explain that Father Time would obviously never do such a thing, Sandman subsided when he realized that they were not going to notice him in the heat of the moment. Toothiana mumbled distractedly, "Time? But-- oh, no," and reached out in the direction that Bunnymund was pointed, squinting as she tried to see exactly where the hourglass was. They always seemed to exist just out of phase with real time, and the master of the Clock had lost myriad devices over the eons that he never seemed to bother recollecting. It would be logical to assume Jack had simply gotten stuck by one, if it weren't for the fact that Pitch had been lurking nearby, made it very clear he had brought the boy here as his own personal vengeance for the year before.

Bunnymund's nose twitched in irritation. "That irresponsible--!"

"It wasn't Time," Toothiana countered in exasperation (saving Sandman the trouble of trying to reiterate the obvious), still groping blindly for the hourglass. She bit her lip, and flew closer, tracing one finger through the air in a tentative half-circle. "It was Pitch. And Jack--" Her fingers brushed the device's ephemeral outline and it blazed brightly for a moment, clearly outlined in the shadows. A careful shove, and its spider-silk casing broke open, spilling out the sands of time into the waters, on the stone and over Jack's head, coating him in grit. All at once, his body grew solid again, outline resolved into the familiar frost-crusted, bare-foot urchin they'd welcomed into their order so very recently.

"Jack!" Bunnymund drew closer, but Toothiana cradled Jack's head in her lap, trying to coax him to waking. Behind them both, Sandman lingered, suspecting the worst. "Jack!"

They called his name together, both of them: Jack! Jack! Jack!

He lay cradled there, blinking slowly, and didn't seem to hear them, staring blankly at the ceiling. When they finally realized that he was not changing, they held him between the three of them, close as they dared with the exceptionally biting cold of his aura, and carried him through one of Bunnymund's tunnels to the North Pole.

Each of them had their way of trying to talk to him. North was busy, to be sure, but each day he made time for the guest they had laid in his bed, pulling up a chair and sitting down beside Jack to tell him another elaborate story about his youth as an adventurous scalawag. Toothiana made a stop every morning, and left at least one fairy by his side, nestling as close as she dared to his chin and trying to nudge him out of his stupor.

Bunnymund sang in a language none of them knew, low throaty songs that pulsed in his chest and echoed through the workshop: songs of hope, songs of rebirth.

Nothing worked.

Sandman watched, and tried to understand what he saw. For the most part, Jack was insensate; this stayed true, for nearly three weeks. Christmas passed, and North and Toothiana both loomed worriedly over the bed each morning, talking to Jack, trying to gently bring him back to them with reminders of the life he'd had before.

How long he perceived being gone was the mystery. Father Time's little baubles were as dangerous as they were because they could reduce the flow of time or speed it up without limit. Jack might have been hurt some other way by Pitch before the hourglass had been laid down, and only experienced a moment; he might have lived a hundred years since then, in the space of only three days. Without being able to ask him, it was impossible to tell.

Toothiana was the first to try to touch him again, and they discovered that there was still someone lurking in his head when he broke into frightened, animal laughter and, breaking down, leapt away from them, hiding now in the darkest corner of North's bedroom, his staff out to ward off unwanted invasion, eyes still wide and largely unseeing. He seemed somewhat aware of their presence, but also to dismiss it, as if there were other things, more real things, somewhere else inside the room.

For another few days, they discussed what needed to be done. Since moving, he had not ventured from his dark corner, and lurked there like a gargoyle through day and night with his endless, haunted stare. Like any Guardian, he did not need to sleep, or eat; he sat wide-eyed, unfazed by the elves and yeti that occasionally peered in on him, unmoving.

North worried over him, fussing, and Toothiana's fairies lingered, though they didn't dare get too close, lest they frighten him away.

Sandman still had work (they all did) so could only visit once a week. It was hard to track improvement; once he'd moved, he was still again, silent and staring. He did not respond to their voices, not to the motion of a hand waved only inches before his face. Still, North tried to pat his shoulder, and he scrambled back in a burst of panic so raw and intense and overwhelming it was palpable, a physical, frigid concussive blast of air that knocked everything back in a five foot radius.

There he stayed, back to the wall, chest heaving, tears silently streaming down his face, until dawn came and he seemed to forget again, head lolling.

"Something has to be done." Bunnymund, unwilling to risk further damaging their friend, brought his demand straight to Sandman when February came and the lukewarm winter began to melt early into Spring. "Someone has to get inside his head, Sandy, and you're the only one can do that other than Pitch."

The unspoken, obvious implication was, _and Pitch is the one that did this, so not much choice there, right?_

As a person not inclined to speak in words, Sandman couldn't easily convey the risk. He had already weighed it more than once since they'd found their young friend, and had yet to come to the conclusion that the journey would be safe. Though it wasn't likely to work, he tried to explain to Bunnymund exactly why he hadn't done something already. Nothing seemed to quite cover the sore feeling in his heart that he was afraid. If he couldn't fix it, then what other option would they have?

He watched Jack keeping his silent vigil in the dreary corner of North's room, watched the frost up the walls that had slowly been expanding up the corner there, thickening at the seam into hard chunks of ice, and called a tiny butterfly of sand to his fingers. Set free, it flew in gentle, slow circles over to Jack's face, circling his eyes and alighting on his nose.

The tension melted out of him, slowly dropping down his body in a chain reaction, until he'd collapsed on the floor face-first, his slightly bruised hands finally relinquishing their death-grip on his staff.

Sandman closed his eyes, held his breath, and trickled down the line of the golden sand that marked Jack's dream into his mind:

and was

instantly

lost.


	3. Pitchiner - Seen

It was a long year.

Children dying in terror had sustained the nightmares. Children who had lain awake at night with the fear of mortality, getting old like their grandparents, getting killed by the people their parents feared; lying awake at night in terror of their parents, in some sad cases, or of fire, or of collapsing ceilings, aliens, skeletons, ghosts, monsters, zombies, vicious dogs, staring dolls, they were the fuel of the deep unease that drove the core of humanity, and Pitch was bathed in it, drowning in it, by the time he finally found himself again.

He had had plenty of time to think about what he wanted to do, how he wanted to repay the world that had, however briefly, cast him out. He had stirred up little nightmares and deep dread and he had wandered into prisons, drinking up the fears of men and women who society itself feared. These were the sweetest fears, purer, in a way, than children: this was why the nightmares had sought Pitch when he was afraid. He could understand, even commend them for it. The fear of a monster was the truest fear that could exist, after all.

While many of the Guardians could not see the hourglasses strewn about the world by Father Time, some had a natural talent for it. Bunnymund was one, and Pitch himself had so much practice seeking them out that he had developed a special system. It involved closing his eyes, and seeking out a place with unusually high or low pockets of fear. High meant an hourglass that slowed time to such a crawl that people had time to feel the full blown panic of whatever was happening as they passed it by. Low meant an hourglass that sped time up impossibly, so that it seemed only an instant had flown by.

As with all things relating to time, the mechanism for this was backwards for both. An hourglass that slowed time in actuality sped time for the individual area where it stood, allowing much more to happen in that area than normally possible in the same amount of time experienced outside of that spot. The opposite was true of an hourglass that sped time up. Being drawn as he was to fear, Pitch sought out the darkest, oiliest patch of fear he could find and went to investigate, seeking out several before he finally came upon the device he had sought.

He confiscated it, stealing away to a subterranean cavern to store it for later, and began to plot and plan.

Frost was easy to lure with a touch of cruelty to spoil a spot of wintry fun, and easier still to manipulate. Pitch called him names and drove him into a self-righteous frenzy, and feinted and fell until the boy took a leap all of his own will into the brilliant beams of a nearby floodlight, out over a baseball field on the outskirts of some small town.

And he was caught, like a little fly on sticky paper, his shadow speared through with demon's claws. He was caught, as the hourglass flipped and Pitch sank Jack down into the deepest time well he'd ever found. And while Jack could not see it, could not feel Pitch's fingers on his face, drinking in the subzero chill of his skin, Pitch could feel what Jack felt. Confusion, determination, hope, and stubbornness, at first. Gradually panic, a long, erotically powerful surge of such a prolonged and terrible panic that Pitch had grown dizzy with the power he was drinking out of this single boy's unbridled fear.

By the time the second day had begun, all that remained was desolation, despair. A glaciating acceptance of the inevitable rose up Pitch's arms when he touched the boy's face, and he shivered with delight, for this was a kind of fear, too. There was a hollowness to it, as with any revenge, but it was a clean victory.

Three days later, Pitch let Frost go with a spring in his step and a smile on his face, drunk with power.

When he slept, taking lascivious pleasure in the luxury of doing something a spirit did not need to do, he wove his own dreams. They were simple things, dreams reliving that glorious, tortured moment that had, for Jack, been eons.

He slept well, and deeply, with a smile.


	4. Jack - This

Rarely ever does an immortal need to sleep, and for the last seven hundred ten thousand odd years, Jack Frost has not slept once.

His own dream is incomprehensibly alien, in a way. In a sort of endless stupor, Jack has lately given up, letting lights flash and play and color in his mind. Some faint and fading ember in the depths of his being whispers that he used to be fun; but what is fun, when you can't even relate to the world that has rejected you? He remembers smells and tastes and light and color and cold and hot and here, here there is a permeating darkness specked with the darker silhouettes of the statues, penetrated by the dimly glowing other-beings, the walkers with their gleaming eyes that stare. These are featureless plains, where no life lives but the walks and Jack, and he has forgotten the words he once had for things long gone extinct.

A faint sliver of light still pushes him, sometimes, struggling and stubborn, back into a foolish state of hope and drive, desire: the muzzy knowledge that there is definitely something else, that things were different, once.

That is what shapes his dream, for though dreams take many shapes, most often they are windows into the mind, into its deepest, strangest places. Jack finds himself under a sky that is cobalt blue, laying on a hill in a soft gray slime that smells like freshly turned soil, and watches breathlessly as tiny lights track the air above him, flickering bolts of energy with tiny wings. Jack marvels at the little flying creatures, all the more when he reaches out to touch them and can sense them, sense their presence.

The first contact is such a delight (and so frighteningly strange) that he skitters back, hunching his shoulders into the slime beneath his back until he is sure that the lights do not falter. He touches them again, and begins to feel a tickle spiking up his palm. The lights are swarming him, and land all along the bone-pale skin on his arm.

When they bite down, he shrieks, jerking up out of an impossibly cold lake under a dark sky, coughing up water. He scrabbles blindly for the edge of the ice, but it seems like his hands keep slipping, his numb fingers not ever closing properly on the surface. His mind traps him there on the edge of escape, struggling for breath, dizzy, coughing. He mechanically fights to pull himself up out of his predicament, yet can never quite manage to drag himself free, either.

He feels nothing. Acceptance, perhaps, as he meaninglessly struggles, neither tired nor frightened.

When a cane extends to him, its familiar wood a little darker than he remembers, not glistening with frost, from the shadows beyond the hole in the ice, Jack simply takes it, unthinking. As soon as his hand closes about the wood, it drags him forward, knocking him right off of his feet and dragging him several hundred yards in the dirt before the horse finally slows. Jack's hit his head by this point on some of the rocks along the way, and his free hand hangs limp at his side, the bound one bleeding where the rope cuts into the skin.

His head hurts; the wet cold darkness parts away to reveal one of the mass congregations of the walkers he has witnessed over the last eon or so. They bow to each other, and begin their feast, tearing each other apart. It seems to take quite some time, but eventually there is a winner, bearing the eyes of twelve victims under the ones that originally dotted its pulsing neck.

The darkness shudders, like a living thing, and Jack has to catch his breath. He aches, aches all over, but he can't remember how or why. His head is throbbing, and apparently his hands are free. He gingerly picks himself up off of the ground, realizing belatedly that the ground is only a soft cloud.

Far below, down a mountain's height, there is the black scorched Earth he has wandered, all this time.

Not for the first time, Jack sees that sight and sighs longingly. This time he does not have to wait until he has climbed a mountain, since he is apparently already here. He throws himself from the safety of the clouds, plummeting down to shatter like an icicle on the hard black rock of the Earth.

His pieces clatter off into every dark corner, thoroughly broken apart, but Jack still sees through his left hand, which is touching the staff. He grips it harder, and yelps when he feels something touch his hand. More than anything, he thinks, he would just like release. And yet-- And yet his curiosity gets the better of him. From where he lies, he can't tell what is touching him, only that it is soft and--

And-- And warm.

Warm. _Warm!_ He slowly coalesces into Jack Frost around that arm, grabbing onto his cane to keep himself from falling over. He staggers about, and when he can finally see, can adjust to the light, he sees a little golden flying thing.

A golden thing! A thing that isn't black or gray or red or static! He crows with delight, wordless and wild, and dances with it (near it, rather, terrified to touch it and accidentally break it apart) in happy circles until he's dizzy enough to pass out.

When he wakes up, the flying thing is circling him. It continues to do so, until he is finally on his feet. He tries to go forward, but it smacks into his nose (into! Not through! Jack's heart is pounding so hard it could burst, and his eyes are stinging. He cries through his laughter, his joy) and tries to lead him off into a dark tunnel to his right.

When he tries to ignore it, it does the same thing a second time. Jack is much more afraid of losing this mysterious, first new thing in ever that he sees than he is afraid of anything else, and considers the merit of setting aside his other plans, for now. After all, a moment ago he was seriously contemplating suicide, destroying himself piece by piece. He doesn't want to lose the flying thing, and really-- even though he is tired-- he doesn't really want to die, either. 

So Jack stands up, hobbling along with the help of his cane, and the voice of the flying thing-- a little nearly-inaudible bell tinkling wildly-- finally goes silent, as they step out of his dream and into another one.

It doesn't make sense in here: they are in a cramped thing, all closed in like a- a- a- a _cave_ , he supposes, only it's warm and soft and cozy, with colorful things in it and, and little, little things to sit on. And on one of the things, it's a plump round red thing (red! Red that isn't the walkers' eyes! Jack doesn't understand at all), there sits a little gold thing and it doesn't look anything like Jack really but it's not a walker, either, and it has a face like his and only two eyes, like his, and it looks at him.

It has a little gold hand (it's made all out of dust! It's a delusion, surely, but such an interesting delusion as he's never had for years.) that it holds out to him, seeming friendly. At length, Jack hesitantly takes it, and feels a surge of familiarity in the gesture. This person thing, this little almost Jack-shaped thing, seems like he's known it before.

He laughs, once and quite unintentionally, when it spreads its hands and a tiny golden _Jack_ dances between its fingers. He laughs, eyes going wide with wonder, and laughs again, and tries to touch his tiny self.

Contact. The glittery gold stuff is smooth to the touch, almost silky. Jack plays with it, fascinated, tracing out a long, dramatic cloak from the little golden Jack-shaped thing that hovers in the stranger's hands. He stares on, wildly intrigued by the familiarity of this display, and flinches back fearfully when other shapes join the little him. Little Jack, by contrast, embraces the other shapes. He grows curious, relaxing, considering the idea and thinking he might even like it. 

Unthinkingly, he tries to speak, the words coming out so hoarse that they're really more of a grunt than an answer.

He tries again; swallows thickly, and again, and one more time until he's able to whisper,

"You-- live forever, too?"

Two little golden hands clasp his, the illusion melting away into a faint gold cloud that surrounds them both. The stranger moves his head in a deliberate gesture, up and down, that feels like Jack should recognize it. It feels like a 'yes', anyway.

He wipes at his face, at tears unbidden, and then is overcome by the urge to reach out. He crushes the golden man to his chest in a fierce, desperate hug and cries himself awake.

Jack Frost opens his eyes, lying on the floor of Nicholas St. North's bedroom, and recognizes the form beside him from his dream. He does not recognize the world he sees, but it's beautiful. He crouches there by the window, unable to stand, too weak even to drag himself to the door, staring all around at the brilliant sights, speechless, smiling, his eyes red with tears.

It's beautiful.


	5. Sandman - Coming

As long as there has been life on the planet, there have been dreams to weave. It may not always have been Sandman who wove them, and he may not always have been called by the same name, but he is very old, and he has been tired, has even wished, once in a rare while, that he could give it all up and rest. There was a time when he had better reason to speak, but that time was long ago and is a distant dream, itself.

This is, perhaps, why he feels a certain sense of familiarity, as he achingly sculpts himself back into a man from the half-scattered sands that had been left behind when he was sucked into Jack Frost's dream. He has been here, too, in the place where Jack Frost is now, staring out at first light, at _morning_ , and smiling so hard his lips are trembling. He is kneeling at the window, one hand stubbornly clawed into its sill to help pull himself up. He looks exhausted, deep, sleepless bruises still marked into his face, his skin completely colorless, lacking the usual faint pink of near-life; the dream they just fought through took its toll on Jack Frost, too.

Sandman cannot bring himself to the window, not at first, but he is relieved to see that his effort was not for nothing, and that is enough for him for a while, as he lays there on his side, taking the time to pull each grain of dreamsand back to himself and drink in the here and now of North's workshop, his cozy bedroom, his wondrous toys. It is lucky that they are here, in a place like this, because it has what they need to heal. Jack can go out into the cold, once he is able to stand again, and Sandman will benefit from a little sojourn into North's study, a little dose of North's latest creative invention, of wonder.

For now, they are alone in the room. Sandman is surprised when, seeing the sun's golden face finally breaking the horizon, Jack flinches back, dropping awkwardly to the floor. He grunts, annoyed by the slight sting of his fall, but rights himself. In so doing, he sees Sandman and brightens, eyes lighting up with happiness and awe and shining just a bit with tears. His earnest smile does not waver now.

"You--" the whisper is so faint, even Sandman can barely hear it. "You're _real_!"

Jack sounds incredulous, and crawls closer, touching Sandman again, as he had in the dream, as if to make sure his eyes are not leading him false. He crows, a barely audible, trilling croon of a sound, and rolls over onto the floor. Shoulder first, Jack wrestles Sandman into another joyous hug, laughing soundlessly. Sandman is too tired to fight his way free, and drowses happily, waking only when the sound of other voices interrupts his napping.

First there is North, rapidly approaching. "Why did you not tell us?!" His booted steps thunder through the floor, but Sandman is familiar with the loudness of everything North says and does. He notes that Jack Frost does not appear to be very familiar with it any longer, given the sudden strength of the grip clutching him to the boy's chest. There's no thought to the gesture, but he feels a little bit as though he has been appropriated as a teddy bear or security blanket, and shakes his head. This will not do.

"I didn't know if it'd work, North. Didn't want to get your hopes up." There, Bunnymund; the distinct humming of Toothiana's wings is notably absent. Well, two people may still be too many just yet, so that seems just as well. With any luck, she is retrieving Jack's childhood memories to help him remember a bit more about the self he seems to have lost, but Sandman feels confident that they will be just as potent later, too, and doesn't linger on that thought.

Sandman pats Jack's hand gently, and he seems to relax a bit, loosening his grip. As soon as the door creaks open, however, Jack scrambles away, back into the half-defrosted corner where he'd been hiding before, brandishing Sandman against the unknown. With a point at the staff lying discarded on the floor here, Sandman buys his freedom, just in time to hold up a hand and warn North and Bunnymund to stop before they come any further into the room.

They freeze, crowded into the doorway and eager to see if Jack has improved, and wait as Sandman turns to Jack, who is now clutching his staff once again in almost the exact same panicked position as before.

He summons, again, the tiny figure of Jack Frost in his hands, dancing and playing about, and Jack seems to calm a bit, focusing on Sandman and not his potential guests. When Sandman adds figures, this time he shows himself first, and then North, then Bunnymund, then Tooth. The tiny Jack Frost embraces each figure, and they embrace him in return.

The panic that had been coming back, the stark mistrust, fades from Jack's posture, his eyes. He doesn't look entirely certain, but he seems willing to give Sandman's elaborate suggestion a try. When he finally lowers his crook, Sandman smiles and pats him on the wrist to reassure him.

"Sandy? May we come in?" North's voice is strangely contrite, though strained with impatience and worry. When he explains that they must come in one at a time, they agree at once, though North decides that Bunnymund should go first, being less intimidating. Shockingly, they manage not to argue, and Bunnymund slowly enters the room, waiting when he sees Jack tense up, his curiosity turning to fear.

He clears his throat, and extends one huge paw, but doesn't step further into the room.

"Jack?"

The sound of his name seems to send a jolt of lightning through Jack's entire body. He jumps, shoulders hunching, and then stares up at Bunnymund, half-wild. Slowly, he jams the butt of his staff into the ground and pulls himself achingly up to his feet. Sandman does not follow, sitting wearily by the window with a half-smile. The hard part, for him, is done. He is simply glad the others are here to help with the rest.

Jack doesn't speak-- not yet-- but it's obvious what has drawn him to his feet, so Bunnymund says it again.

"Jack, how are you feelin'? Are you all right?"

It's like pulling teeth (if one can excuse the expression), but Jack stubbornly pushes through, mouth working as he tries to remember words. The scope of his dream was too vast for Sandman to see the entirety of the time that Jack was alone, but it had seemed clear enough that at some point, Jack had simply stopped trying to talk at all, even to himself. Some of his difficulty stems from not speaking for so long, but some of it also seems to be the words themselves: missing, misplaced things not needed in such a long time that Jack had forgotten them. He says, in a gravelly little shadow of his voice, "M-my name, you-- how did you know my name?"

He takes a stumbling step forward, slightly closer to Bunnymund, driven by his hope and curiosity, keeping himself on his feet by leaning most of his meager weight into his staff.

Bunnymund is very patient, and holds still, not risking another scare. He waits, letting Jack come all the way to him, even tolerates Jack touching his arm in wonder. "We're friends, Jack. Remember? You're one of us."

Comically, Jack looks down at himself, then up at Bunnymund, and over his shoulder at Sandman. He asks, haltingly, "The ones who live forever?"

From behind Jack, Sandman tries to explain what he'd seen in the dream. The horrific ghostlike beings that had haunted the place between times that Jack had seen are not easily translated, nor something he wishes to remind Jack of if the boy happens to look his way. He settles for trying to get Bunnymund to understand the severity of the time spent, and gestures for Bunnymund to simply agree, for now, and worry about the specifics later. He picks up on it with only a second or two of awkward silence, nodding to Jack.

"Yeah, kid. That's right." He endures as Jack circles him, still inquisitive, looking back at Sandman again before frowning at Bunnymund. "What?"

"You just-- look--" Jack gestures helplessly, unable to remember the words he needs, though he seems to be trying. When he is thinking deeply, he ducks his head, brow furrowing deeply. "A long time ago, there were things-- things like you. But-- smaller?"

With his usual tact, Bunnymund takes Jack's confusion, and runs with it, folding his arms over his chest. "They're bunnies, mate. I'm a bunny. Don'tcha remember all that?"

There is no way to explain, and Sandman simply shakes his head, putting up both hands in an effort to signify that Bunnymund should stop pressing for now and go back to letting Jack set the tone of the conversation. Rather than making a breathrough, Jack looks even more confused, and answers very honestly: "No. I didn't think anything else lived forever." He shudders. "Even the walkers died, sometimes."

Before Bunnymund has a chance to react to that cryptic statement, North loses his patience and bursts through the door, offering them each a glass of something sweet to drink. For Bunnymund, hot chocolate; for Sandman, eggnog; for Jack, who stares up at him but seems to have gotten over his fear, a glass of milk, which he eyes but does not immediately accept.

"What is it?"

"Milk, Jack! Is good for helping to sleep. You still look like you need some more!" North laughs, and gestures to the now-vacant bed. Jack looks at it blankly, and then back up at North, one eyebrow raised, baffled.

"But I don't need to sleep."

"Or drink, or eat," North agrees easily. "But is still pleasant, sometimes. Sleep leads to dreams, yes?" Jack nods, seeming almost entranced by North, or perhaps amused that he and Bunnymund are nearly of a height with one another. It's hard to tell where the tiny smile is coming from, exactly. "Drink milk, have some sleep. We live forever, as you say; time enough to do more when you are feeling better, yes?"

Reluctantly, Jack Frost yields, though he has to get help over to the bed and sit down before he can take North up on his offer of a glass of milk. He seems surprised by the taste, and is more amenable afterward, even letting both North and Bunnymund help him get situated on top of the sheets (explaining awkwardly in whispers that he doesn't like to be confined, and does not wish to lie beneath the blankets if he can help it). It would be helpful to have Toothiana around to translate for him, but Sandman is pleased to discover that Jack is able to speak enough to inadvertently convey the magnitude of his experience as he opens up to the conversation, comfortably nestled on the bed.

"What are you? We?"

North winces, but covers quickly, turning it into a grin. "Guardians!"

"Guardians." Savoring the word, Jack looks into the cup again, taking another sip and shivering with delight. "It's good."

"Is it? Ah, then I am glad." Pulling up a small wooden chair, North sits beside the bed, leaving more space for Bunnymund to get to the window and check quickly to be sure Sandman is still more or less in one piece. "Tell me, Jack Frost, what do you remember, before you were brought back here? We have been very worried about you."

Sandman knows the answer will be incomplete, and waves off Bunnymund's hushed whisper of "Everything in order, Sandy? You don't look your best," with a sketchy blueprint of the inside of North's wondrous workshop. Seeming to understand, Bunnymund picks him up, cradling him close enough that only a few grains of sand slip free and fall to the floor unattended. He will worry about them later; for now, he is grateful as Bunnymund carries him out of the bedroom and to the central pillar of stairs, where the bustle of the yetis is fierce with excitement. They prepare all year to be sure they have their work complete in time for North's holiday, and their ingenuity is the stuff of dreams. He floats along at first, tiredly taking in the latest designs of little dolls, building blocks, and stuffed animals. Once a little bit of the wonder has caught him up, he lassos a tiny remote-control rocket ship, and rides it around the room, drinking in little moving robotic dinosaurs, boardgames with popped-out pieces, blank bound books for creative children to write in, electric trains, the tools of young artists wrapped in loving sets of crayons, pastels and pencils, clay, finely wrought musical instruments--

In time, Sandman is feeling his old self again, and at last returns to the central floor, where Bunnymund is waiting.

"Better?"

Sandman nods, and inquires as to the whereabouts of Toothiana.

"Tooth? She said we'd be needin' Jack's teeth, most likely. Plans to be back in about an hour."

With a smile, Sandman silently cheers, and inquires if they will need him to stay any longer, as it has been most of a night already, and some young dreamers are in danger of missing out on their dreams for the night.

There is hesitance, even worry, but Bunnymund smiles slowly. "Well, I suppose you've done the hardest part, haven't you, mate? Go on. We'll give you a ring if we need you back to help out the kid again."

Sandman politely dons his cap and bows, suggesting that Bunnymund let North know in case there is any confusion. Shortly after, he departs on the wings of a great golden dragon, soaring out from the North Pole down to the world, and work.


	6. Pitchiner - Epilogue

It is the middle of July when a sudden, cold wind sinks down into the depths of Pitch Black's lair. He has been languishing, of late, in Namibia, appreciating the misty desert and the power of half-shapes in the distance. Startled by the unexpectedly chill weather, Pitch is drawn away from the half-finished map he had been re-creating, checking mouth of the cave he has chosen as his refuge for intruders.

When it proves to be nothing, he becomes suspicious, checking furtively for signs of treachery. There is nothing; nothing in his lair, nothing outside of it for miles but sand and mist, and when he wanders out into it, he finds nothing of note. He wanders for upwards of an hour before he becomes certain it was just a trick of the chill wind, and turns back.

There, waiting for him, is the stoic face of Jack Frost.

"Hello."

In an instant, it is so cold that Pitch cannot move, his entire body covered in a thick sheet of ice. This distressingly means that he is not able to hold himself against the chill. He is able to see, and he is able to think, and he is able to listen. Jack Frost smiles very slightly, but it looks tired, not playful. He lowers his staff, then sets it in the sand, leaning on it. His eyes, however, never leave Pitch's, still searching them.

"I almost remember, you know. It took a while, but I do." This soft, almost gentle voice is a pale shadow of the cheery, childish banter that Frost had put up before. While Pitch supposes he ought to feel proud that he's reduced that childish enthusiasm to such feeble volume, all he really feels is intimidation.

He cannot blink, or answer. He waits.

"All this," and Frost gestures vaguely at the Earth itself, "still doesn't quite feel real, but it's pretty amazing, after what you put me through."

Pitch finds himself the focus of a very hard, searching stare, and wonders what Frost is thinking.

He doesn't get to find out, precisely. Instead, three things happen:

First, he is ripped in two.

Second, the nightmares that once overwhelmed him are severed from his mind with a fierce, angry whinny of dismay at being thus deprived, and frozen solid into a new ball of ice so cold he can feel it behind him.

And third, Kozmotis Pitchiner faints dead away on the ground at Jack Frost's feet, and knows no more.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes! I was going to post notes originally on the kinkmeme but I felt like I was using up too much space and deleted them instead. 
> 
> 1\. Time: So, as originally stated in the story, each millisecond for Jack passes as a day. Thus, 1000 milliseconds per second, for 60 seconds for 60 minutes for 24 hours for 3 days, equates to a total of 259,200,000 days or, divided by 365 days for a year, 710,136 years and change. This version correctly displays the amount of time Jack has been lost in between time, but originally I kept reading the decimal one place over and thought of it as seventy thousand years. But what is 600,000 more years to a steadfast heart, but a day?
> 
> 2\. Edits; this version of the story is cleaner, and hopefully more coherent, than its counterpart on the meme. Some less impressive turns of phrase may be missing, and some needed explanations have been added. I hope you enjoy!


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